A world without potatoes, or tomatoes? It's hard to imagine that we've had these vegetables in Europe for less than 500 years. And stranger still, for much of that time they were shunned as poisonous, like their relatives Deadly Nightshade and Henbane! The tomato has only become popular in northern Europe and America in the last 150 years.
The Potato
The common or garden potato has its origins in the Andes Mountains of Peru and Bolivia - around 5000 BCE. Living at altitudes of 10,000 feet and above, the Indians valued the nutrition, storage quality, and ruggedness of the potato. The Aymara Indians developed over two hundred different varieties.
Potatoes were a very important staple of the Incas' diet - archaeologists commonly find potato shaped pottery from that time. Potatoes were used to divine the truth, and to predict weather. The Incas even measured time in units based on how long it took for a potato to cook to various consistencies!
The Spanish conquistadors introduced the potato to Europe around 1570. People recognised the potato as a member of the same family as the deadly nightshade - understandably, it took some time to catch on! Potato leaves and fruit are poisonous, and green potatoes are developing toxins.
Indeed, when Frederick the Great of Prussia wanted his people to plant and eat them in the 1620's, he had to enforce his orders by threatening to cut off the nose and ears of anybody who refused! By the time of the Seven Years War (1756-1763), potatoes were an established part of the Prussian diet.
A Frenchman, Antoine Parmentier, taken prisoner by the Prussians during that war, was impressed by the potato. Once back in France, he chose less rugged means to popularise the humble vegetable.
He acquired a miserable piece of ground outside Paris and cultivated 50 acres of potatoes. With his harvest, he devised delicate potato dishes for the nobility (remembered to this day in Potage Parmentier, or Leek and Potato Soup).
The story goes that Parmentier put guards on his potato fields during the day. People believed the crop to be valuable, and slipped over the wall at night. Before long, a bit of greedy curiosity had potato culture spreading fast among the local peasants, where all Parmentier's efforts at "agricultural extension" work had previously failed.
Apart from its role in developing agriculture in Europe, the Andean curiosity helped fuel, literally, the Industrial Revolution. Regular supplies of filling, nutritious potatoes fed the people cheaply through Europe's period of massive urbanisation.
The Tomato
The Tomato belongs to the same family as the potato - with the same poisonous leaves, just to remind us of cousin deadly nightshade! Wild tomato varieties grow along the western seaboard of South America, from Chile to Ecuador.
Somehow, the wild ancestor of our tomato made its way to Mexico, and was domesticated, perhaps around 500 BCE. It came to be cultivated throughout Central America by the Aztecs - where the potato was an Inca vegetable.
Like the potato, the Spanish conquistadors brought the tomato to Europe. Yellow ones, "pomo d'oro" or golden apples arrived first - and were eaten with oil, salt and pepper; red tomatoes were introduced some years later. The tomato spread readily through Spanish communities around the Mediterranean, and from there into other southern European cultures. Can you imagine Spanish or Italian garlic, herbs and olive oil - without the tomato?
Spanish galleons had none of the problems of scurvy which the British and Dutch sailors suffered - thanks to the tomato being so rich in vitamin C.
Northern Europeans were much more suspicious of the tomato's toxic connections with Deadly Nightshade. British eccentrics grew tomatoes as ornamental plants. Italians had "golden apples", Spanish their "Moor's apples", and the French their "love apples", - but the northerners associated tomatoes with werewolves. That link survives to today; when Linnaeus classified plants in the 18th century, he used the legend to give the tomato its botanical name - Lycopersicon esculentum, or "edible wolf peach".
It was the middle of the 19th century before the tomato managed to overcome these suspicions. In the 1920's, the introduction of industrialised canning processes allowed the tomato finally to become the ubiquitous vegetable it is today
Other Cousins
Peppers originated in the tropical areas of Central and South America - and again the Spanish introduced the vegetable to Europe. It is only recently that the large capsaicin-free sweet peppers have been developed from the pungent and aromatic chilli peppers.
The Aubergine belongs to the same family, but has its origins in India. It was domesticated from a small, bitter, and prickly wild plant. The Arabs brought aubergines to Europe in the 13th century, and it has been grown in Italy since 1550.